Michael and Ann’s boy, Nathan, was robbed. Not that he cared, because he didn’t. But I saw the whole thing, and, of the twelve “Best Bagger” contestants, he was the class of the show. The way he studied the relative bulk, density, shape, and fragility of some twenty-five pounds of groceries. And the way his … Read more
Remember Brian Herron? Just three summers ago, the former Minneapolis City Council member was the poster boy for political graft after the FBI videotaped him accepting a $10,000 bribe. This very public crash-and-burn earned him a year in prison and spawned an investigation of the entire Minneapolis City Council. Political wags claim that Sharon Sayles-Belton … Read more
Ernesto “Che” Guevara has come a long way. Once best known as a fierce companion of Fidel Castro, he now graces the T-shirts of revolutionaries, as well as assorted hipsters, celebrities, and stoners who couldn’t find Che’s native country (Argentina) on a map. Since the release of The Motorcycle Diaries, a film based on Che’s … Read more
We’ve hit an interesting point in the arc of TV storytelling. It’s almost completely self-referential. Like monks from those earlier Dark Ages, copying illuminated manuscripts over and over again, today’s Hollywood hacks are feeding internally until there is no discernable output or input of ideas. Only yeasty, subdividing molecules of “Cop,” “Hot Chick”/“Dopey Chick”/“Brainy Chick,” … Read more
Once you’ve paid forty bucks to sit down with a hundred complete strangers wearing party hats and paper bibs, the rest should be easy. It’s so easy, in fact, that some folks put away as much as two pounds of crayfish before the American Swedish Institute’s annual krafskiva was over. Assisted by scheduled shots of … Read more
About twenty years ago I had a spiritual awakening. Actually, it was more like a little chat. I was lying on a hospital bed, staring out the window. “Okay, I’m willing to believe you’re out there,” I said to the steam coming out of the sewer in front of St. Mary’s, “if you’ll help me … Read more
When you take stock of your life, you often start to appreciate the things you’ve taken for granted. At thirteen thousand feet above sea level, I had a moment like that. Walking over Dead Woman’s Pass on the Inca Trail, heading to Machu Picchu, I began to feel really lucky to have had such a … Read more
Labor Day weekend marked the end of Wack the Iraq, a boardwalk game in the seaside town of Wildwood, New Jersey. (Its inventors must have assumed that customers untroubled by the game’s objective would also be unlikely to bristle at the gross grammatical insult of its name.) The game involved players shooting paintballs at live … Read more
Somewhere between West River Road and Summit Avenue, blood will begin to seep through the shirts of a good many Twin Cities Marathon runners. It will seep from a particular part of the anatomy—their nipples—which makes this a delicate subject. It doesn’t happen spontaneously, as many non-runners might think. “This is caused by the abrasion … Read more
I joined a book club. Okay, that’s not all. I joined not one but three book clubs—and left each as quickly as the last. I am a twenty-something female, and I love literature, I really do. It’s just that book clubs… I can’t make them work. My first was a summer fling, hosted by my … Read more